E. W. Baker The People's Minister - Susan Sim

“Barker was not a natural politician – he lacked raw political ambition and the consuming passion of the ideologically driven. He was a natural leader – in sports, in school. He also had a first rate mind; he was a Queen’s Scholar. He was a renaissance gentleman and a human being comfortable in his own skin – no chip on the shoulder, nothing to prove and not one to seek out the political limelight. As such, one tends to forget how much he was a crucial element in our birth as a sovereign nation – this reluctant politician was the legal mid-wife of Singapore’s Separation and birth as an independent nation; the man who as Speaker shaped the conventions and order of a new Parliament; the man who as Minister was behind some of our most important nation-ilding endeavor like public housing, reclamation etc. Many remark how we remember the man that Eddie Barker was and forget he was a Minister because the human being in him was always so much larger and deeper and real than any institutional role he played at any one time. This book attempts to piece together the story of Eddie Barker – his deeds, his accomplishments and the extraordinary life he led being the man that he was – and just how much Singaporeans and Singapore have been the beneficiaries of it.” – Mr Benny Lim, former Permanent Secretary for National Development and former Permanent Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office, who retired in April 2016